The World Cup Marketing "Derbies"

 When Cristiano Ronaldo, part of Nike’s World Cup push, tweeted Nike’s second World Cup ad,

  released on its YouTube page, it caused a surge in views that topped 70m in days.

Adidas sponsors the event, and they feel Nike’s pressure and they are pretty well aware of their ambush campaigns. Consequently, they set up a temporary command center in Rio de Janeiro.

During the World Cup's one-month duration, social, digital, PR, marketing and event managers from the United States, UK, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, China and other countries will all run operations from the temporary “headquarters”.

Moreover, Adidas setting up media “newsrooms” in five cities including Shanghai and Moscow, with copywriters, filmmakers and photographers ready to post photos and video clips. At the same time, Nike is deploying more than 250 people in the U.S. China, Brazil, and elsewhere to feed social media.

This is just one of the “derbies” going on through out the world cup in Brazil. Some brands are going head-to-head in their digital marketing campaigns, like many have done for previous sporting events. For example, the most buzzed about beer brand at this year’s Super Bowl wasn’t top sponsor Anheuser-Busch, but rather party crasher Newcastle. Along with agency Droga5, the beer brand chose to focus on the digital impact of the event rather than the actual game itself and brand awareness grew by 5%.

108 million people watched the Super Bowl this year. That’s 607 million less than the World Cup finals alone in 2010. A properly executed ambush could have a huge impact during this tournament and brands like Volkswagen and Nike are preparing to do just that.

•   Adidas vs. Nike: Adidas might have been the official clothing outfitter of the 2010 tournament, but Nike was the dominant brand on social media. With twice as much social conversation, Nike enjoyed a buzz that was both disruptive to its competitor’s investment and instrumental in driving brand awareness in the global soccer market. After such success though, Nike is forced to go mainstream and compete in all channels with Adidas. That is why they launched a series of heavy artillery on all media channels, especially as Nike is the sponsor of home team Brazil.

•   Hyundai-Kia vs. Volkswagen: Serving as FIFA’s automotive sponsor since 2002, Hyundai and its Korean sibling Kia have locked up World Cup auto rights through 2022. And that’s fine by Volkswagen. The global automaker is looking to shake things up using a heavy digital and social plan to get its GTI model in front of the younger male Hispanic consumers watching.

Here are some of the very interesting brand battles going on during the world cup:

OFFICIAL SPONSOR	AMBUSH BRAND
COCA-COLA	PEPSI
ADIDAS	NIKE
HYUNDAI-KIA	VOLKSWAGEN
MCDONALD’S	BURGER KING
BUDWEISER	KEINEKEN

Sources: Bloomberg, mashable.com,

The "Social" World Cup

There is no argument that the soccer World Cup is by far, the biggest sport event in the world.  But apparently, it is also the most “social” event on earth. And that is why the largest brands are allocating all efforts on it, with unlimited marketing budgets to approach the masses during such event.

Here are some facts that would help you understand the scope of the event.

The Audience

• 400 million people are expected to see the contest’s final match on July 13th.
• Each of the 64 games will garner viewership roughly equivalent to the Super Bowl.
• Searches related to the World Cup tournament in the past four years have outnumbered those for the Olympics, the Super Bowl, and the Tour de France combined. 
• Facebook estimates 500-million of its 1.28-billion users are soccer fans, including 110-million men aged 13-34 in big markets — a demographic coveted by advertisers.
• 37% of soccer fans worldwide said they interacted with a mobile ad daily in order to get more information about a product or service.

Search & Social

• In 2010, about 18% of football-related searches during the World Cup final were done on a mobile device, according the. Compare that with 2014, when nearly two thirds (63 per cent) of those searches during a popular UEFA Champions League match were done on mobile.
• World Cup ads have thus far attracted 6.9m shares across social media, 31.4 per cent more than the 4.7m notched up by the Super Bowl.
• There have been more tweets about the 2014 World Cup, before a ball has been kicked, than for the entire tournament in 2010.

Marketing Spend

• For the 2010 World Cup just 20% of marketing spend was digital.
• “About half of Adidas’ media expenditure around the event will go online, versus the fifth which was spent during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.”
• Marketing spends for the 2014 event are being reported as hitting an estimated $1.3 billion, with an increased share going to digital.
• There could be as much as $2.3bn spent on World Cup TV advertising globally.
• By 2018, when the quadrennial tournament is scheduled to take place in Russia, advertisers will spend 17 percent more on Web ads than on TV, the researcher predicts.
•  Corporations will spend about $68.5 billion on TV this year and $56 billion online. 
• Digital ad spending in Brazil will jump 28.0% this year and reach nearly $5 billion on digital media by 2018. 

The Revenue

• Visitors to the World Cup event will spend over $11bn (£6.6bn) in the country.
• FIFA predicts that it will collect around $4bn from Brazil 2014.
• Pannni, makers of football stickers, predicts they will make £127.3m from South American sales alone.
• Domino’s are estimated to make a tasty £84m from pizza sales in the UK during the World Cup.
• Sportswears manufacturers expect are expecting revenues of between $12.6bn and $14.5bn.

These are only a few facts, which helped marketing teams to justify and explain to their managers why that world cup in Brazil 2014 is where all brands and companies should focus on in 2014.

During the tournament, participating brands will enjoy a passionate base of soccer fans participating in their digital programs. But the true value of those engagements will come long after the trophy is won. Brands should be looking at the World Cup as an opportunity to turn soccer advocates into brand advocates through their digital channels. That means building email and Facebook segments, understanding important data points from hashtags and contests and creating an equally effective plan for Q3 and Q4 to continue engaging with the new customers they’ve worked so hard to acquire

Sources: eMarketer; Google, Nielsen, Facebook, Twitter, FIFA,

The Transitional Digital Marketing Strategy of Linked-in

Valued at $ 12.4 billion and appeared in the annual list at 77^th of 100 global brands, Linkedin speaks itself as both “a social network and content business”[i]. Therefore, its shift in ad from displayed ad to content marketing does not catch people by surprise. According to its global VP of sales, Penry Price, Linkedin’s recently launched native ads, which it calls sponsored updates has already accounted for “13 percent of its advertising revenue”[ii].

However, a report on the marketing efficacy of Linkedin in terms of customer engagement against similar social networks, such as google + and facebook, found that Linkedin doesn’t “drive the same depth of social relationships as others”[iii]. They based their conclusion on the following findings. First, on average the percentage of the overall Internet users accessing Linked in is much lower than facebook. Second, Linkedin users tend to be much reluctant to engage with brands, such as following the brands as a means of deepening relationships.

Therefore, the authors of the report recommended marketing professionals using Linkedin more for promoting brand awareness rather than engaging with customers. This suggestion to some extent, is aligned with the unique structural composition of the Linkedin groups where people of similar interest or experience share knowledge and stay connected. This type of social network which works around making professional people more productive and successful is demographically different from traditional social network. As a result, it is more suited for companies, instead of hard-selling products to boost sales figures, to tell stories, build brands and interact with professionals with a higher consumption capcity.

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[i] LinkedIn embarks on ‘biggest’ UK brand campaign http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/sectors/technology-and-telecoms/news/linkedin-embarks-on-biggest-uk-brand-campaign/4010665.article

[ii] ‘LinkedIn is transitioning from a display ad business to a content marketing platform’

http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/disciplines/social-media/news/linkedin-is-transitioning-from-a-display-ad-business-to-a-content-marketing-platform/4010129.article

[iii] LinkedIn falls flat on consumer engagement

http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/disciplines/social-media/linkedin-falls-flat-on-consumer-engagement/4010965.article

Small Business Solution – what’s next for digital marketing?

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/sajeel-qureshi/problems-smbs-face-using-_b_5482789.html

The article presents one of the greatest challenges confronted small business owners everyday - while marketing automation tools like CRM  will be able to generate follow-ups with customers in order to produce potential new businesses,  where does the database of such contacts come from ?

As Qureshi’s another article what digital marketing tool to use and when mentioned, it is crucial that “ you need to get contacts and email addresses before yo you start.” Different from large-scale businesses, such as hospitality groups, airline business or banking industry which has maintained a magnitude of customer information, small business owners can’t usually access such a contact list. Additionally, some of the marketing automation tools even set up a minimal  number of contact information to get started. And noted here is that the contact information here mainly refers to email contact, where most of the sales information will be sent. And echoing with last week’s guest speaker, email is still considered to be one of the most used marketing tool to get information across to potential users across different age groups and consumption habits.

Therefore, the big question is how to gain a potential customer database. The article is suggesting the small business shall provide discounts or gift cards to people who are interested in their service or products through various marketing channels in exchange for their contact information. Also, friends referral is also a very useful and efficient way to follow up, as small business can then access the customer groups which are quite proxy to the existing ones. The key to enlarging customer database here is by providing adequate financial incentive for people to access their information, in an effort to encourage potential consumption. It might also be helpful, somehow to do a greater financial analysis especially after a few months of initial opening period in the hope of a fast database build-up phase. Whether to do it, and how to do it in a more financially viable way are also worth considering.